**Monuments to Migration and Labor: The New Jersey Im/migrant Laborers' Monument Project**

**Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for Monument Artists**

  
**Opportunity**

_Monuments to Migration and Labor: The New Jersey Im/migrant Laborers’ Monument Project_ invites artists to apply to create one of three temporary Monument Installations that honor immigrants’ and migrants’ contributions to the state of New Jersey as laborers. Each selected artist will be assigned to one of the state’s three regions (North Jersey, Central Jersey, or South Jersey) and will create a temporary monument installation that is responsive to and inspired by extensive community dialogues that will be conducted by trained facilitators in each region. Each region’s monument will reflect that region’s specific histories, and address the unique concerns, perspectives, and stories that participants in the community dialogues have identified as relevant to the present moment.

Monument installations must have a physical presence in a publicly accessible outdoor location and must remain on view for at least four months. 

  
**Project Background**

The Mellon Foundation has awarded Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, a multi-year grant for _Monuments to Migration and Labor: The New Jersey Im/migrant Laborers’ Monument Project_ to support research, engagement, and public installations commemorating migration and the labor that immigrants and migrants perform. This grant is part of the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project, a multi-year initiative, which aims to transform the nation’s commemorative landscape, ensuring our collective histories are more completely and accurately represented. The Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project supports efforts to express, elevate, and preserve the stories of those who have often been denied historical recognition, and explores how we might foster a more complete telling of who we are as a nation.

  
_Monuments to Migration and Labor_ is led by a diverse team including Rutgers’ faculty, leaders from arts and cultural organizations from across the state. and the following Regional Partners: the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center and Noyes Museum of Art of Stockton University (Atlantic City site Noyes Art Garage) (South Jersey), coLAB Arts (Central Jersey), and Newest Americans (North Jersey).

For more information about the Project see: https://njmml.com/.

  
**Project Context**

In 2021, Monument Lab, in partnership with the Mellon Foundation, produced a National Monument Audit, which studied approximately 50,000 conventional monuments across the United States to assess the monument landscape. The audit’s key findings were that the subjects of monuments are overwhelmingly white and male, the most common features of American monuments reflect conquest and war, and the story of the United States as told by our current monuments misrepresents our history.

  
Data from the 2023 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, shows that 24.2% of residents of the state of New Jersey are foreign-born. At a time when immigration to the United States is being questioned, and immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and visa holders face political attacks, deportation raids, family separation, and the denial of citizenship, we invite the public to ask questions and share stories, informed by historical evidence and firsthand accounts, about how migrants have contributed to New Jersey economically, socially, and culturally. _Monuments to Migration and Labor_ aims to address gaps in the monument landscape and disrupt assumptions built into current commemorative landscapes about who deserves credit for economic progress and the production and circulation of goods and services more generally.

  
This project will promote dialogues about how progress gets defined in economic, environmental, and social terms, and encourage workers and migrants, in collaboration with project artists, to assign their own meaning and significance to their experiences and to sites of memory where labor occurred. Through this process, together we will work to make monuments to migration and labor that are visible features of New Jersey’s commemorative landscapes, and that challenge audiences to reconsider what they know about migrants and their labor.

  
The monument installations will celebrate immigrant and migrant laborers, past and present, while also interpreting their complicated stories and exploring what it has meant to face the hostility, exploitation, and exclusions groups migrating for work have historically encountered and continue to face. Ultimately, the Project will give the public the chance to confront art and history commemorating the unglamorous, often unnoticed, but essential labor that immigrants and migrants perform.

  
**Process**

**Community Dialogues (prior to Monument Artist selections)**

The Project will facilitate community dialogues in each of the three regions of the state (North Jersey, Central Jersey, and South Jersey). The dialogues will take place from March 1 through August 31, 2025\. The Project is training im/migrants and second-generation members of those communities to serve as dialogue facilitators who will guide different publics in conversations about labor histories in their region, while also soliciting responses that feature personal narratives and perspectives. Community Artists, recruited separately from Monument Artists, will also be selected to participate in the dialogues and document the conversations and stories shared, ultimately creating smaller-scale artworks that will be displayed at partnering community organizations in each of the three regions and online. 

  
Finally, dialogue facilitators are being trained to document themes, topics, and key perspectives shared during community dialogues, and will be synthesizing responses and comments from the dialogues so that they can be shared with the selected Monument Artists to draw on to develop their monument installation concepts.

  
**Public Events (after Monument Artist selections)**

The selected Monument Artists will develop their installations working in close partnership with community stakeholders over multiple stages, including a series of three Public Events for each region that artists will help plan.

  
The Public Events will take place from Fall 2025 to early Spring 2026\. The first Public Event will introduce the Monument Artist to community and regional stakeholders and allow the artist to engage attendees in discussions about migration and labor. At the second Public Event, the artist will share an initial concept for a monument installation and receive feedback from community stakeholders. At the third Public Event, the artist will present their revised design for the monument installation, incorporating earlier feedback, and receive final comments and suggestions from community stakeholders.

  
Throughout this process, Via Partnership, the Project’s public art consultant, will work with the artists to identify and secure monument installation sites and serve as a liaison for the artists. 

  
**Monument Installation Programming and Activation**

Programming and activation that engages the public will be key to the success of the monument installations. As part of their scope of work, Monument Artists will work with the Project Team to propose a Community Engagement Plan. The Project Team will help facilitate and support agreed-upon programming and activations.

  
**NJ Monument Project Symposium**

The Project will host a symposium at Rutgers University once the monument installations are unveiled, to take place in the fall 2026\. The project team, in collaboration with the Mellon Foundation, will invite artists, scholars, and community organizations from the United States and New Jersey, to learn from project participants and to workshop their own plans and ideas. Monument Artists will participate in the symposium. Travel costs, lodging and meals for the symposium will be covered separately by the Project.

  
**Monument Installation Sites**

Sites for the Monument Installations will be selected in collaboration with the Monument Artists from a list generated by the community partners and project stakeholders. Via Partnership, the project’s public art consultant, will help determine viability of sites, including helping to secure permissions, and assist the artist with site-related technical concerns.

  
**Monument Installation Goals**

The overarching goals for the Monument Installations are to:

* Draw on the work done in the Community Dialogues, recognize and honor im/migrant laborers’ histories and stories, and bring visibility to the significance of im/migrant laborers and their contributions to New Jersey.
* Offer entry points for the public to engage with stories of im/migrant laborers and develop a deeper understanding of migrants and workers’ experiences and this aspect of our society.
* Foster conversations about the role of im/migrant laborers in our society, and their experiences, putting history and the present day in dialogue with each other.
* Generate national interest and serve as a model for other communities to pursue similar projects and conversations.

  
**Regional Context and Parameters**

In addition to the overarching goals stated above, each region has a unique context and specific factors that should be considered in the development of monuments.

  
North Jersey

The immigrant labor force in Northern New Jersey has historically been extremely diverse, both in terms of occupations and countries of origin. Im/migrant labor was an essential component of the Industrial Revolution, which in the U.S. arguably began in Northern New Jersey at the Great Falls in Paterson, and then flowed down the Passaic River to Newark and Jersey City. The public dialogues in North Jersey will engage the wide variety of immigrant communities, past and present, whose labor built New Jersey’s three largest cities. At each stage of this history different im/migrant communities arrived to work in the factories and construction sites, provide domestic care and nursing, staff restaurants and other service industries, and start the businesses that give the state its distinct character. African American, Arab, Eastern European, Jewish, Latine, and South Asian migrants all contributed to this labor history, will contribute to the public dialogues, and will have a stake in the monument design. For this reason, our goal will be for the selected artist to create a monument that can be activated to attract and serve multiple im/migrant communities.

  
Central Jersey

The Central Jersey region will be focusing culturally and geographically on the experiences of the Latine community in New Brunswick. Predominantly Oaxacan, the Latine community in Central Jersey is also comprised of immigrants from Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and other Latin American and Caribbean countries. The Central Jersey project will consider these communities’ experiences working with staffing agencies and as warehouse labor and restaurant workers, as well as the experience of trying to find work as a new arrival. Through the dialogue facilitations, we will have the opportunity to contrast these experiences with those of the City’s older immigrant groups including Hungarian and Puerto Rican communities. 

  
South Jersey

South Jersey is the most rural part of New Jersey, and the population is dispersed across multiple areas that each have different centers and regional orientations. For this reason, the monument installation for South Jersey should be able to travel to or take place at multiple sites. The Project has partnerships with cultural and arts organizations in Atlantic City, Seabrook, Bivalve, and Millville, which may be available to help find venues or locations for the resulting artwork and - and help strengthen connections and relationships between different communities within South Jersey. The Project is especially interested in monument installations that explore the region’s long history of seasonal migration, involving Black, Italian, and Caribbean workers, for jobs in agriculture, oystering, and service industries catering to tourism on the Shore, and how these communities were established as more permanent over time – as has been the case with more recent immigrants as well.

  
**Artists’ Scope of Work**

In each region the selected artist will be responsible for developing a community engagement plan and designing, fabricating, and installing the artwork, including:

* Participating in and helping design the three Public Events for their assigned region.
* Developing and presenting initial concept and final designs for monument installation at the Public Events and to the Project Team and site owners for final approval.
* Working with the Project Team to select and finalize site selection.
* Executing the final design on schedule and in budget, and in a manner that conforms to the approved concept.
* Managing all aspects of the installation of the artwork.
* Providing maintenance instructions for the completed artwork.
* Working cooperatively and maintaining effective communication with all parties involved in the project.
* Assisting with the promotion of the artwork and attendance at dedication event.
* Participation in the _Monuments to Migration and Labor_ Symposium at Rutgers in the fall 2026\. (Travel costs, lodging, and meals to be covered separately by the Project.)
* Participating, as requested, in media interviews.
* Managing and facilitating the removal of the artwork from the site at the end of the exhibition period and the return of the site to its original condition.

  
**Anticipated Timeline**

* Mid-May, 2025 - Finalists Selected and Notified
* Week of June 7 -13, 2025 – date TBD - Finalist Interviews (virtual)
* June 2025 - Artists contracts
* Fall 2025 - Early Spring 2026 - Three Public Events
1. Artists introduced to community and engage with attendees
2. Artists present initial concepts and receive stakeholder feedback
3. Artists present revised designs and receive feedback
* March – June/ July - Fabrication
* July/August - Monument Installation Openings
* Fall 2026 - NJ Monument Project Symposium at Rutgers
* Late 2026 - Deinstallation of Monuments

  

Artwork displayed in New Jersey. 

  
**Monument Installation Budget**

The art budget for each region is $75,000, which includes all costs associated with monument design and creation, development of a Community Engagement Plan proposal, and installation and deinstallation of the monument.

The Project is committed to working with artists and will apply for additional funding from the state, counties, Rutgers, and other sources devoted to the public arts and humanities to support community-engaged programming surrounding the completed installations. The Project aims to raise at least $10,000 per installation to support activation programming.

The Project Team may develop publications, educational curricula, conference presentations, and other materials inspired by the monuments.

Monuments to Migration and Labor: Monument Project

Online May 1 - May 31, 2025

  
For this online group exhibition, we invite artists to submit any artwork that was inspired by their sense of home. Whether good, or bad, a home base shapes the person we become. Home not only means a physical place; it can also be a state of mind. The feel of a fabric, the scent of a spice, or sound of a note can bring us back to a time and place.

  
We will accept artwork in any medium, from any year, and any size you are willing to ship to a potential buyer.

  
Non-Juried Online Group Exhibition.

$20 USD Submission Fee - Artists can submit 2 separate pieces/images

Memories From The House - Open Call For Group Exhibition

The photographic, digital and video works that will be selected for the collective exhibition scheduled for July 2025 and curated by LoosenArt will be focused on the theme of rites. Here the rite is understood as a recurrent practice, conducted with seriousness and commitment through a prescribed procedure that gives it validity.

  
Since the origins of rites among primitive and tribal peoples we have visual testimonies of their executions, and images sometimes become indispensable means to symbolize deities, spirits and other supernatural entities to make the forces they evoke concrete.

  
For centuries art has been strongly linked to ritual practices, and even today, through the documentary function of new media, we have evidence of performance and artistic practices related to them.

  
The call is open to works related to ritual practices that testify to its wider functions, from sacred to social ones, and from the intimistic and family-biographical to psychological and introspective ones.

Group Exhibition in Rome city, Italy in July 2025.

Rituals: Group Exhibition in Rome

Co-sponsored by TERAVARNA Art Gallery, the much-awaited 3rd Budapest International Art Show (art-BIAS) is going to steal the art spotlight of Europe. The art show will be held in June 2015, with the Gala Opening on 6th June at the Golden Duck Gallery, Budapest. Artworks for the fair shall be handpicked by TERAVARNA under a selection round and the best of the show will be recognized globally and will get extensive media exposure. All the chosen artists shall be eligible to display their artwork during the fair at no extra cost. This is an OPEN CALL to every artist who wants to embrace the thriving European art scene. The submission deadline for the application is 30th April 2025 and the application charges are $20 per artwork (non-refundable). If you have queries, write to us at info@teravarna.com.

3rd Budapest International Art Show | Physical Exhibition

REAKTOR is seeking works and mindsets that strongly reference the present moment, making them candidates for timeless presence in the 7th edition of Potenziale. Here, reference to the present is not understood as conformity to prevailing interpretations but as an acute perception of being aware.

  
For this edition, the open call is specifically for projects designed for the garden, inviting works that engage with the space in a meaningful way. The open call is addressed mainly to artists from Central European countries, encouraging perspectives that reflect the region’s unique cultural and historical contexts. A key element to consider is the fence separating the garden from an adjacent construction site—projects should thoughtfully respond to or integrate this boundary into their conceptual approach.

A budget of up to €3,500 and technical support from the REAKTOR production team is granted.

REAKTOR POTENZIALE: Call for Concepts

'Broken Britannia' will be part of the second Swindon Art Fringe Festival which will run this year from 16th - 29th June 2025 across various high profile venues in the Swindon town centre.

  
For 'Broken Britannia' submissions of physical art pieces; 2D, 3D, photography are welcome, but also there is a keen interest for digital art and moving image and audio to enable artists across the globe to showcase their work and their interpretation of what it is like to be alive in Britain in 2025 or living overseas and observing from afar.

Broken Britannia

‘Art B.R.U.T’ is all about showcasing the raw, unfiltered creativity of self-taught artists from Swindon and surrounding areas. Inspired by Jean Dubuffet’s idea of ‘Art Brut’ (Raw Art), this exhibition is packed with bold, expressive pieces that break away from the usual rules of art. There’s no formal training here, just pure, unrestrained creativity.

  
Expect a mix of painting, sculpture and digital art with audio descriptions that immerse you into the creative process. This isn’t just an exhibition—it’s an invitation to challenge what you think art is and reconnect with that spark of creativity we all have inside. 

  
Art B.R.U.T is a celebration of artistic freedom, showcasing a diverse range of voices and styles while adding something fresh and exciting to Swindon’s cultural scene.

Swindon Museum and Art Gallery will take 40% commission on sales.

Art B.R.U.T

“A discovery guide for recovery” – a project run by Sineglossa (IT), with NGO Territory (UA) and Fundacja Ziemniaki i (PL), co-funded by Creative Europe – has just launched an open call for six international artists (including two Ukrainians) interested in co-designing with Ukrainian communities a “non-touristic” guidebook on the present and future of Ukraine.

  
Applicants are called to design unconventional tours to discover the Ukrainian region of Bakota, in Western Ukraine, by involving the inhabitants in a process of recovering memories of the past, raising awareness on opportunities and problems of the present, foreseeing possible future scenarios. Artists will be hosted for a two-week art residency at Bakota Hub, a cultural centre in Horaivka, Khmelnytskyi Oblast (Southwestern of Ukraine), created on the basis of a former abandoned school and used in the two past years as a shelter for internally displaced people. The tours will be printed and published in an international guidebook dedicated to non-tourists, those who do not travel to collect postcards but to discover the authentic spirit of a territory. The publication will be designed in the style of a traditional travel guide with a mixture of essays, images and image essays. The texts will be in Ukrainian and English. The art direction and design of the publication will be overseen by a graphic design studio or individual designer. It will be published together with Fundacja Ziemniak i.

The selected artists will receive a 3.000 EUR grant to produce their tour, two-week hospitality at - and travel to - Bakota Hub (Ukraine), their artwork featured in an international publication, the training on the Non-tourism methodology through a co-design workshop in July in Warsaw, artistic curatorial and tutoring feedback sessions, network and exchange opportunities with other residency artists at Bakota Hub in Ukraine.

A DISCOVERY GUIDE FOR UKRAINE

CEE Animation brings together regional activities for promotion and development of animation and its talents in 17 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It seeks to increase professional experience, to present the abilities of filmmakers and producers, and improve the quality of content and the visual side of projects.

  
The project teams (director/scriptwriter and producer) must attend both the online pitch training and the onsite pitching sessions (no online pitch is allowed). The CEE Animation Forum will only accept projects that have duly paid the participation fee and submitted all documents and information requested by the organizers prior to the event.

  
Projects will be assessed by a committee made up of international experts and organizers staff. The committee will take into consideration creative idea, originality of the story, design and visual style, producers’ background and projects’ prospective and coproduction potential.

Selected films will be shown 4-6 November, 2025 at the CEE Animation Forum in Pilsen, CZ.

  
The participation fee required includes 2 accreditations to the CEE Animation Forum 2025: online pitch consultancy session before the event, onsite technical support and pitch rehearsal, onsite presentation of selected project in front of the audience, pre-scheduled one-to-one feedback meetings with jury members of your category, access to the programme of the CEE Animation Forum 2025, promotion of your project (PR, webpage, Facebook). Costs of travel and accommodation are paid by the participants.

CEE Animation Forum

"Change" is an umbrella term that can encompass a wide variety of changes in people's lives. A radical change, new circumstances in the environment or in life, something new and unfamiliar to which one should or even must adapt. Sometimes this happens quickly and effortlessly, but equally, this transition to something else may only succeed after a period of hesitation or refusal – until one adapts, allows oneself to be persuaded, or realizes that one's old attitudes, previous knowledge, and experiences are no longer getting one anywhere and are losing touch.

  
What does that mean? Something is changing, is underway, and will require us to adopt new behaviors, and we don't yet know exactly what that will look like.

  
In recent years, and especially in the past year 2024, many people have experienced very strong and diverse "changes," upheavals, transformations, and escalations in the world, in politics, and in everyday life. Something is in the air, something is on the way; clouds are looming on the horizon. A time of anxious waiting until the new clearly reveals itself and manifests itself so that we can react. Is it something good, something positive – or will it pose a threat to us, does it portend a shift to new living conditions?

  
Climate change, wars, political instability, the loss of friends or close relatives, currency devaluation, career reorientation, illness, a new phase of life with an "open ending" – many areas of our lives are currently shifting and changing, increasingly and simultaneously – and fears, uncertainties, and mistakes are to be expected. On the other hand, of course, new knowledge is also emerging; young people are experiencing the success of their ideas or the realization of long-held dreams; we are experiencing confirmation of courageous attempts in our daily lives. It is becoming increasingly important to maintain a positive and forward-looking attitude to life and to enjoy life!

  
The theme of "changes" offers a broad scope for a photographic representation of the Hoepfner Foundation's new 2025 photo competition.

  
The painter Richard Oelze, one of the leading artists of the "New Objectivity" movement, created his famous painting "Expectation" in 1935/36\. It depicts a crowd dressed in winter clothing—with their backs to the viewer—looking down from a slope into a vast plain, waiting. A diffuse landscape bathed in a charged, stormy light. Something hangs in the air, clouds gather on the horizon. This is perhaps how one might feel in light of the great unrest in the world. Something is about to change; we are not entirely optimistic about what these "changes" will mean for us and our usual lives.

  
Let's stay optimistic and creative! Good luck and success to all participants in their photographic implementation of this theme!

**Monetary Awards:**

* 1st prize 3,000€
* 2nd prize 2,000€
* 3rd prize 1,000€
* 4th - 6th prize 500€ each
* 7th - 10th prize 250€each
* Audience Award 500€

  
The award ceremony will take place on Thursday, September 25, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. as part of the exhibition opening at the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Lammstraße 13-17, 76133 Karlsruhe.

  
**Exhibition:**

The exhibition is planned for autumn/winter 2025/26 at the Karlsruhe Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Lammstraße 13-17, 76133 Karlsruhe.

Changes – Hoepfner Photo Competition 2025

Find your next art opportunity. Explore and apply to current open calls by leading art organizations around the world, published daily on ArtConnect. 

Calls for Artists

Find your next art opportunity. Explore and apply to current open calls by leading art organizations around the world, published daily on ArtConnect.

Add

Opportunities

For Artists

ArtConnect

Support